I am delighted to be hosting the wonderful Michelle Lovric on her blog tour for her latest children's novel, Talina in the Tower. Anyone who's read my review will know I enjoyed the book and, as something of a Venice nerd myself, I'm so pleased that Michelle has chosen to talk about her love of the city in the blog:
Indulging my Venetian Curiosity
– Michelle Lovric
I probably don’t have to tell you that I’m really lucky, scouting locations in Venice for my novels.
Canals,
cats and cappuccini aside, I’ve been
particularly blessed in the writing of my third children’s novel, Talina in the Tower, because I’ve been
walking around the city with one of my heroes, Venice’s greatest purveyor of fascinating
minutiae – even though he died a hundred years ago.
When
a Venetian wants to find out something about his city, he will go to his
shelves to consult the one book that is to be found in every home in Venice. This same book is
indispensable to any scholar or novelist who investigates Venetian culture,
history, architecture and art: every respectable bibliography includes a
citation or twenty from Giuseppe Tassini’s Curiosità
Veneziane – Venetian Curiosities,
originally published in 1863.
Curiosità Veneziane recounts the stories of the streets
and squares, bridges and palaces of the city, all listed in alphabetical order
and meticulously cross-referenced. Tassini’s charm and verve as a writer,
however, blow the dust off history. His book weaves hauntings,
gossip, graffiti and scandal into history. The joy of the book is in its
anecdotes, like the tale of the time the devil took the shape of a monkey and
jumped out of a palace behind San Marco. Better still, the angel who marks the
hole in the wall, is still there to see – like almost every other Venetian
curiosity cited by Tassini.
These
days I can walk around with my hero in my pocket, literally. Curiosità Veneziane’s 800 pages are now
available in a small, dense edition. I never leave the house without him. And
in Talina in the Tower, he’s become a
character, a close friend of Ridolfo Marìn, a professor of magic. Tassini is
set the task of proving, with his research skills, that Venice truly belongs to the Venetians – and
not to the ravening Ravageurs, semi-magical hyena-like beasts. Unless Tassini
can prove otherwise, the Ravageurs may pursue their burning desire to destroy
the city they insist is built illegally on their ancestral lands.
Who
better than Tassini to lift the veils of truth and myth that surround the
foundations of Venice?
Giuseppe
Tassini (1827–99) was the son of a solid middle-class family of Friulian
origin, but with some exotic provenance. His grandfather had been ambassador to
Istanbul, where
his father was born. His mother was the daughter
of an Austrian colonel. The young Tassini originally aspired to be a poet and
lived very much for pleasure. His father’s death appears to have brought on a
new sobriety in the young man, who then graduated in jurisprudence. But he had
inherited a comfortable fortune – sufficient to liberate him from earning his
living in law. His income allowed him to devote himself solely to his passion
for Venetian history, topography and legend, especially the whimsical, curious
and neglected aspects that most appealed to him personally. He spent the rest
of his life burrowing through public and private archives.
The
historian was a perpetual bachelor and an enthusiastic gourmand, who sported a
little goatee and thick glasses. He lived in the Calle dei Spechieri (San Marco
635/634). Since 1988, the first floor has carried a plaque commemorating Curiosità Veneziane and its author, ‘the
passionate researcher of our traditions’.
The book has
seen many editions in Italy,
and small selections have been featured in some English anthologies, including
my own. Yet until this moment, this most invaluable reference text has never
been fully translated into English.
It would not be fair to rave about Tassini and Curiosità
without giving you a
little sample, so here’s my translation of a favourite passage, the story about
the devil-monkey referred to above.
Calle/Ponte
dell’Angelo (Palazzo Soranzo)
...
even more curious is the little story said to be the origin of the sculpture of
an angel placed on the facade of the palazzo.
We draw it from the Annals of the Cappuccini, by Father Boverio …
The good priest tells the tale of a
lawyer from the Ducal Curia who lived in this same house in the year 1552,
having accumulated a fortune in dishonest earnings. One day this gentleman
invited to dinner one Father Matteo da Bascio, the leader of the Cappuccini,
and a man of the saintliest character. He told him, before sitting down to eat,
that he had in the house a monkey so wonderful and talented that it was able to
perform all his domestic services. The priest knew immediately, by divine
Grace, that under this disguise a demon was hiding, and, having immediately
asked to be taken to the monkey, which was lying flattened out under a bed, he
said to it, ‘I command you in God’s name to explain who you are, and for what
reason you have entered this house.’
‘I am a demon, and I have come here
for no other reason than to claim the soul of this lawyer, which will earn me a
great deal of honour.’
‘So why has a ravening beast like
you not yet killed him and taken him with you to hell?’
‘Only because every night, before
going to bed, he always commends his soul to God and the Virgin; if he omitted
to do this just once, I would carry him off to eternal torment without
hesitation.’
Father Matteo, hearing this,
immediately ordered the enemy of God to depart from the house. The monkey was
reluctant, saying that he had been commissioned by the highest authority and
could not leave without wreaking some kind of damage.
‘So,’ said the priest, ‘you may
wreak some kind of damage, indeed, but only what I prescribe, and nothing more!
When you leave, you may make a hole in this wall, and it will serve as witness
to what has happened here.’
The devil obeyed, and the priest
went to dine with the lawyer. He
reviewed the lawyer’s past life with him, and finally delivered an
admonishment: taking a corner of the tablecloth in his hand and squeezing it,
he miraculously let flow a great quantity of blood, declaring that this was the
blood of the poor people sucked dry by the lawyer’s many unfair extortions. The
lawyer lamented his transgressions, and warmly thanked the priest for saving
his soul. However, he was terribly afraid of the hole left by the devil, and
claimed that he would not be safe as long as that gap remained for his proud
enemy to re-enter. But Father Matteo reassured him, and encouraged him to put
into that hole an image of an angel, because evil angels always flee from
images of holy angels …
Michelle
Lovric’s website
Talina in the Tower is published on February
2nd, 2012, by Orion Children’s Books
Michelle Lovric blogs on the History
Girls website and An
Awfully Big Blog Adventure website
